I am running UBUNTU 17.10 and have more than one Linux kernel that I might want to run.

According to the current grub manual, GRUB_DEFAULT is "the default menu entry. This may be a number, in which case it identifies the Nth entry in the generated menu counted from zero, or the title of a menu entry, or the special string ‘saved’. Using the id may be useful if you want to set a menu entry as the default even though there may be a variable number of entries before it."

The grub menu no longer gives the various OS options. It provides a menu element named Advanced. Selecting this menu item brings up a submenu of bootable kernels. GRUB_DEFAULT does not index this submenu.

Should I add my own custom boot options to /etc/grub.d/40_custom and reference these menu items in the grub.menu? This solution seems cumbersome. Defining a default kernel was much simpler in the past.

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1 Answer

Here's the easiest way to do this...

Edit /etc/default/grub...

sudo -H gedit /etc/default/grub

near the top of the file, edit/add these parameters...

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

Then update grub...

sudo update-grub

Now, when you boot, it'll remember the last OS you selected, and make that the default until the next time that you choose a different OS.

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